Yesterday, we helped out a local fun ride by volunteering as jump stewards. What was interesting, for us, maybe not so much for the riders involved...., was the way that some of the horses and ponies reacted to our presence. Or more specifically, the set up of a car, in the woods, with chairs, with people in the chairs. Some horses decided that this was quite a worrying state of affairs and that this kind of set up may be perfectly fine on the roads or at a show ground but quite clearly this did not belong in the woods!!!! Cue eyes out on stalks, suspicion and even the occasional bit of snorting.

By a process of elimination, we came to the conclusion that it wasn't particularly the car in the woods, nor the chairs per se, but people sitting in the chairs was clearly just WRONG as far as some of the horses were concerned. Of course, not all the horses that passed us were worried, just a small handful, but for the ones that were we found that if we stood up and moved away from the chairs, the horses immediately calmed down quite alot. Perhaps they thought we were being eaten by the chairs!

I find this interesting in a number of ways. This is a type of scenario that the "Scary Corner" in Horse Agility is designed to address. Originally, the Scary Corner concept sprang from Roadworks, but our fun ride scenario fits the bill very well also. What they have in common is that it will be a more pleasant, safer ride if the horse's confidence can be built up, together with the horse's trust in its rider, so that the fear response can be replaced with a combination of confidence and curiosity. On a personal level, it did make me think, yes I do do all this Horse Agility with my ponies, and I have accustomed them to many different types of unusual stimuli, but would they accept a car with chairs and people in chairs in the woods? Knowing my ponies, I might assume that they would probably march up to the people and try to frisk them for treats, lol, but that is exactly the danger of taking things for granted and I'm now intrigued as to exactly how they would react! The next time I have a dry day with some spare time at the weekend, I'll be roping in the other half to get out the chairs and come and sit with me in the field, just to see how the ponies do react :-D

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About me

I started Horse Agility as a way of making groundwork more fun. It was something I could do with my semi-retired old boy and his small, cheeky, pony companion. What amazed me was how much it improved the ponies' general confidence in the process. I compete at Advanced 1 star level on line and at liberty.